Perfect Circle

Rating:
Summary: BEST BOOK IN A LONG WHILE !
Review: I've read and enjoyed several of Sean Stewart's books, especially Gavelston and Mockingbird. But Perfect Circle deserves it's name in every sense. Contains one of best ever
one liners "East Texas has four great natural resources: heat, oil, mosquitoes and cousins."
A very strong sense of place and characters so well defined
I thought I would recognize them on the street. It starts out as the looser involved in a nasty mystery with a paranormal ap-proach but the suspense builds, peaks and resolves in a thoroughly suprising and saitisfying way. And all the time it is rooted in the entangled lives of family and friends. No isolated hero who rides into town, takes his knocks while sorting things out and rides out of town at the end, battered, but essentially unchanged.
Take my word for it as a sci-fi granny, THIS IS A VERY GOOD BOOK!
L.J.


Rating:
Summary: Seeing Ghosts
Review: "Ghosts don't do things to you. Ghosts make you do unspeakable things to yourself."

Here's what Sean Stewart's newest novel is not: it is not predictable, it is not trite, and it is most definitely not boring. It is also, quite frankly, not quite like anything else I have ever read, from Sean Stewart's hand or anyone else's.

On the other hand, "Perfect Circle" is one of the most remarkable and original novels I've read in some time, and of the three Stewart novels I have read, it is easily my favorite (which is saying something -- I enjoyed "Galveston" and "The Night Watch" quite a bit as well). "Perfect Circle" is clever, spooky, funny, sad, sharp, observant, honest, thoroughly modern yet somehow timeless, and very, VERY well-written.

In the pages of this short novel, clocking in at fewer than 250 pages in total length, Sean Stewart accomplishes what most writers can't seem to do in a work twice as long. He tells an emotionally honest, unique, and gripping story, featuring characters that are accessible and full-bodied, expressing themes and ideas that resonate long after the reader has turned the last page and closed the book.

"Perfect Circle" is a book about ghosts, about loss, about grief, about responsibility, about family, and about coming to terms with one's lot in life. It is a fantasy novel of sorts, in that it expresses ideas that fall outside the "natural" laws we accept today, but it is a fantasy novel bearing the dark edge of reality. This is no escapist fantasy, but rather a strange sort of realist fantasy. It is a combination which Stewart had always danced with in his other work, but never more effectively than in this book.

As always, Stewart's prose is a marvel in itself. In his other work I could always see the flair of a poet in his words, and it's here too, but more balanced than before by a succinct, efficient use of words and dialogue. Stewart tells us just enough, never too much, and lets the reader fill in many of the blanks. His use of dialogue is witty and very real, on a par with Quentin Tarantino's handling of dialogue in his films, or Nick Hornby's novels.

Comparisons to other authors (Nick Hornby and Stephen King come to mind most readily) are somewhat apt but do not provide a whole picture. What Sean Stewart has really done in "Perfect Circle" is to establish himself as his own voice, mostly unlike anyone else's. The book could be applied to several genres but not firmly pegged in any of them, and the author is in a class all his own.

To put it simply, this is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. Sean Stewart was already an excellent author in my eyes, but with "Perfect Circle" he has outdone himself. He has written that rarest of things: a truly unique story told in a truly unique way. It is not the story itself which stands out so much as how he tells it, and what it does to the reader. Like a great movie or a really effective piece of music, this little book will echo in your mind and in your heart long after you've put it down, and it will stay with you.

"Perfect Circle" is, in the best sense of the word, haunting.

Rating:
Summary: Great for music fans and Houstonians
Review: A punk rock ghost story set in Houston and named after a song from the album that first clued a twelve-year-old me in to great music that would never be played on the radio. How could I not love it? Well, there are parts that are just not very well written and there are characters acting in a way that cmopletely conflict with what we know of them. Having said that, I will say I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the Houston references. Although I will say I felt a little like I did on first seeing _Slacker_, Stewart like Linklater plays freely with local geography to suit his needs, which leads to a sense of disorientation for those who know the city well (Interesting that Richard Linklater actually shows up in the novel eating in the Galleria towards the end). While this is definitely not an example of "literary excellence", it is a fun read that any Houstonian and fan of what was once called college music (for lack of a better term) will truly enjoy. Stewart definitely deserves a wider readership and a bigger publisher.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet, funny, creepy, in all the best ways
Review: I carried Perfect Circle around for three days, hugging it to my chest, juggling it with my meals, reading from it whenever I had a spare moment and being resentful of things that would take me away from it, like bedtime or crossing the street. That rarely happens nowadays. I had so much fun reading this! Stewart is funny without belittling his characters, and poignant without being sappy. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Like air
Review: I tracked down a copy of the new Sean Stewart novel, Perfect Circle, and it's good enough to be worth waiting eight years for, let alone the four years it's been since Galveston. So no complaints here.

A little about the milieu, first. It's the modern world, akin to Mockingbird, with that touch of elemental unexplained strangeness. Like Mockingbird, it's set in Texas; like many of Stewart's novels, it's about family. In the author's notes for Mockingbird, he says that "I had in mind something that would 'fit' with Resurrection Man, but with the quantities of light and dark reversed; a scary comedy, as it were, rather than a brooding novel with occasional jokes." I think that Perfect Circle is a better match for those words; it echoes the relationship between death and family described in Resurrection Man through a lens crafted of punk music and Texas.

If I was going to write a cover blurb, on the other hand, I'd say something like "Perfect Circle establishes Sean Stewart as the American Nick Hornby," which would make all the High Fidelity fans happy until they read any of his books besides Perfect Circle. This is why I'm not in marketing.

And come to think of it, Perfect Circle isn't a comedy, either. So never mind the whole thing and just read it already.

Rating:
Summary: Touching, funny and really well written
Review: I was very fortunate to have this book recommended to me at a local bookstore and after reading it I vowed to recommend it to everyone I could.
When I bought this book I had never even heard of Sean Stewart, but a cover recommendation by Neal Stephenson doesn’t hurt, so I dove in and enjoyed every page.
Stewart does a wonderful job of involving the reader, conveying the feel of Houston and the rest of south-east Texas, and giving the reader wonderfully crafted characters that we care about.
I am from Texas and the references, feelings, and crazy warmth of Texas shines through from references of the Empire Café to the heated 42 tournament, to the feel and feast of a crazy family reunion.
I’m off to read more of Stewart’s work and to introduce as many as I can to this fantastic book.

Rating:
Summary: A haunting tale of a haunted man
Review: PERFECT CIRCLE is a remarkable book.

Will "Dead" Kennedy has the sort of life you wish you could wake up from. He's a Texas punk who shaved off his Mohawk when it started to recede. His wife left him when she was pregnant and married an ex-Marine. He just got fired from his latest dead-end job, this time for eating cat food at Petco. And he sees dead people: his cousin AJ, murdered at 22 by her ex-boyfriend. His uncle Billy, vaporized in an accident at the petroleum plant. A dead girl tied up under the sink.

Ghosts come back because they want something, or because living people want something from them: murder victims looking for revenge, or accident victims pulled back by someone's guilty conscience. Will can't tell if his life has been a long slow slide downhill because he didn't want anything enough, or he didn't get to keep the one thing he wanted.

He sees AJ reflected in mirrors and windows and CD cases, and regrets that he never loved a woman enough to kill her.

Will sees ghost roads as well as the ghosts of people, pathways into the black and white world of the dead. He walked down one once, and almost didn't make it back. PERFECT CIRCLE is a ghost road into territory that most books don't explore at all, or at least not from the angle that Sean Stewart takes. It's scary, though not because of the ghosts; disturbing on all sorts of different levels; and written like a song, with images and phrases which recur as refrains, changing with the context and gathering emotional weight as they go. The colors of the living world shine bright against the monochrome of death.

Neal Stephenson's "Stephen King meets Ibsen" blurb is weirdly appropriate. Especially when you recall that Stephen King is often quite funny. But that's not what you remember about his books when you put them down.

Rating:
Summary: A haunting tale of a haunted man
Review: PERFECT CIRCLE is a remarkable book.

Will "Dead" Kennedy has the sort of life you wish you could wake up from. He's a Texas punk who shaved off his Mohawk when it started to recede. His wife left him when she was pregnant and married an ex-Marine. He just got fired from his latest dead-end job, this time for eating cat food at Petco. And he sees dead people: his cousin AJ, murdered at 22 by her ex-boyfriend. His uncle Billy, vaporized in an accident at the petroleum plant. A dead girl tied up under the sink.

Ghosts come back because they want something, or because living people want something from them: murder victims looking for revenge, or accident victims pulled back by someone's guilty conscience. Will can't tell if his life has been a long slow slide downhill because he didn't want anything enough, or he didn't get to keep the one thing he wanted.

He sees AJ reflected in mirrors and windows and CD cases, and regrets that he never loved a woman enough to kill her.

Will sees ghost roads as well as the ghosts of people, pathways into the black and white world of the dead. He walked down one once, and almost didn't make it back. PERFECT CIRCLE is a ghost road into territory that most books don't explore at all, or at least not from the angle that Sean Stewart takes. It's scary, though not because of the ghosts; disturbing on all sorts of different levels; and written like a song, with images and phrases which recur as refrains, changing with the context and gathering emotional weight as they go. The colors of the living world shine bright against the monochrome of death.

Neal Stephenson's "Stephen King meets Ibsen" blurb is weirdly appropriate. Especially when you recall that Stephen King is often quite funny. But that's not what you remember about his books when you put them down.

Rating:
Summary: Fantasy for adults, and none too soon.
Review: Stewart is one of the great unrecognized talents. In a genre where far too much of the writing is Kool-Aid aimed at children and swallowed by adults because there's no other choice, Perfect Circle is a jet-black cup of espresso. Regret, family, the mid-thirties realization that life is continuing to move but you stopped a long time ago, mixed with a piquant dose of East Texas Trailer-trash Gothic that's usually the turf of Joe Lansdale or Kinky Friedman.

Here's hoping this is the kick in the ass needed to bring some of his other very, very good books back onto the shelves.

Rating:
Summary: This is a really fun read.
Review: This is my first Sean Stewart book.

Mr. Stewart has a nice command of our language and makes it easy to fall right into this story. I definitely recommend this book.

Kennedy is an instantly likable, but seriously flawed protagonist - which always makes for great reading. It is very easy to feel sympathy for DK, even when he makes the stupid choices. By the end of the story I had a good level of anxiety, just hoping DK would make the right choice.

When you feel anxiety for a character in a book ... you know you have a winner.